This Christmas, we’re serving up holiday platters for the many moods and sonic flavors of the season. We get down to some very merry Chicano rockabilly from Los Straitjackets; gather around the fire with French fiddlers in snowy Maine; imbibe “Sugar Rum Cherry” concocted by Duke Ellington; dream of a white Christmas a laBooker T. & the MGs, and hear the tale of Miles Davis‘ “Blue X-mas” from jazz composer Bob Dorough. Plus, cool Yuletide exotica from Esquivel, joyous free jazz from Rahsaan Roland Kirk and ring shouting for a New Year from the Georgia Sea Island Singers.

JELLY ROLL MORTON

January 5th, 2005

New Orleans pianist, composer, raconteur and the self-proclaimed “inventor of jazz” is featured through original Library of Congress music and oral history sessions, and interviews with jazz scholar Dan Morgenstern. The pervasive influence of Morton’s music includes the swing-era sounds of Benny Goodman to recent revivals by Dr. Michel White and Wynton Marsalis.